Stef's Blog - a native London Southlander and unrepentant 'Conspiraloon™' who doesn't trust anyone, not even himself. Sometimes I take pictures. I also enjoy swearing immensely and think much faster than I can type, so each post comes guaranteed to include at last one confusing typo. OK?

Monday, April 27, 2009

Piggies

A specimen of the influenza virus that killed 21 million people in the 1918 worldwide epidemic has been recovered from the frozen remains of a flu victim buried in Alaska.

Researchers at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology announced on Thursday that biopsy samples from a corpse exhumed from a cemetery in Brevig Mission, Alaska, contained genetic material from the flu.

Experts have said that analyzing the genetic pattern of the 1918 virus will help scientists learn how it was able to kill so many people and will help them prepare vaccines against the virus if it resurfaces."

Last year, Army researchers identified the flu virus in preserved lung specimens taken during autopsies of soldiers killed by the flu in 1918 at military bases in Fort Jackson, S.C., and Camp Upton, N.Y., which is now the site of Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island.

At Brevig Mission, Dr. Johan Hultin, a retired San Francisco pathologist, exhumed four bodies from a mass grave and found that one, an obese woman, had been well-preserved. Tissue from her lung contained genes from the killer flu.

Dr. Jeffery K. Taubenberger of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology said last year that the genetic pattern of the 1918 flu virus was unlike that of any other flu but was closely related to that of the so-called swine flu. He said that although the 1918 epidemic was called the Spanish flu, the virus apparently was a mutation that evolved in American pigs and was spread by United States troops mobilized for World War I.

The finding supports a widespread theory that flu viruses from swine are the most virulent for humans. Both the Asian flu virus of 1957 and the Hong Kong flu virus of 1968 mutated in pigs.

The 1918 flu genes were first isolated last year from the lung tissue of an Army private who had died at Fort Jackson. Army doctors in 1918 preserved specimens in formaldehyde and wax from some of the 43,000 servicemen killed by the flu.

28 comments:

Parabellum
said...

So all this panic about H5N1 was about what again?

And with all that civilian air traffic the US military doesn't even need to move troops around to spread a virus... They just need to have a vaccine ready. Which, as far as I understand it, you can do only if you know which influenza virus is going to hit you.

But they wouldn't infect their own people, now would they? *cough* Anthrax *cough* Or endanger the people which serve in their military? *cough* depleted uranium *cough*

I feel really protected, now that all the dead birds are collected. And every ounce of tooth paste is confiscated before boarding a plane.

That Sykes was involved in the war in which the British invented the concept of the extermination a.k.a. concentration camp and was buddy buddy with leading British Zionists, whose WZO generation had contact with the Nazi's and made up Nazi Officer class is a pure coincidence.

"The virus arrived at even the most improbable places, like isolated Alaskan villages. In one such village, Wales, 178 of its 396 residents died during one week in November, after a mailman arrived by dog sled, bringing the virus along with the mail."

Missing virus samples the Army has been investigating were likely destroyed years ago when a freezer broke, according to the Army.

The samples were part of a collection of materials that had been handed down from researcher to researcher as scientists retired, said Caree Vander Linden, spokeswoman for the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

The second researcher to receive the collection performed a full inventory and couldn't account for three vials of Venezuelan equine encephalitis, she said. The discrepancy was reported to the institute's safety officer, and eventually to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which triggered the investigation by the Army Criminal Investigation Command.

During the investigation, one of the researchers who'd worked with the collection recalled a freezer failure at one point that destroyed a number of samples, Vander Linden said.

"Everything in it was basically lost," she said.

This occurred before USAMRIID began using a computerized database to track its samples, and investigators could not find a paper record of the event, she said.

Chris Grey, spokesman for the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, said its investigation into the potentially missing samples is still open.

The investigation found no evidence of criminal activity in regard to the missing samples, he said.

The command is performing a mandatory final review of the case before closing it, Grey said. He would not speculate on when the case would be closed.

Venezuelan equine encephalitis is a virus carried by mosquitoes that can cause encephalitis in humans and horses, according to the CDC.

Death from the disease is rare in humans. Adults usually develop only flulike symptoms before recovering.

The CDC recommends Venezuelan equine encephalitis be handled in biosecurity level-3 facilities, as opposed to BSL-4 facilities where more dangerous pathogens such as Ebola are handled.http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/news/display.htm?StoryID=89333

Strike me down, me an my sick kind of humour, but with all that viruses going round I had to think of this. Some Hugo Drax meets Major Payne and Dr. Strangelove kind of RL villain, thinking to himself how wonderful his plan is going.

Ouch, that is some low IMDB rating, if I have ever seen one. 2.5. That hurts. Even "New Rose Hotel", which was the worst movie I have ever seen, has a rating of 4.1. I guess Cristopher Walken could play a lamp post and people would still like...

Which brings me to bond villains. I thought that Michael Lonsdale played the retired spook in Ronin (Three bond villains for the price of one!) much more to the point than the genocidal psychopath. Granted, a RL genocidal psychopath would behave probably same as he was portrayed by Lonsdale - but this is Bond IN SPACE!. I like my Magnificent Bastard to look, talk and act like one. Oh well, call me old fashioned.

But then again, I used to like Sam (DeNiro) from Ronin for his subtle acting of a "(CIA-)man of honor in a den of (IRA/Russian/French)thieves". I really liked that movie. Till one day I asked myself what sublime message it teaches me. Oh well.

woeful as those two excellent choices are, neither features an hilarious comedy shoot out in a mortuary full of corpses

if aliens ever do visit our planet looking for evidence to decide whether Humanity should be erased or not for the sake of the Universe I hope to God BB2 isn't available on pay for view in their hotel room

Student finance sure is a con, loans aside. The government tries to judge you on your parents income unless you've been supporting yourself for 3 years straight without any gaps in the wage\benefit information... although I suppose you could tick the "estranged" box...

Oh well, I used to watch every episode of CSI, in all the flavours available (Las Vegas, Miami, NY). Ronin is quality compared by this. I'm over it now anyway, no more TV for me (its amazing, going from being a TV junky to total TV abstinence is one of the few things were I managed to improve my life).

And talking of pigs:http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/may/10/g20-policing-agent-provacateursMoney Quotes:"I don't believe in conspiracy theories but this really struck me. Hopefully, a review of video evidence will clear this up."and"We would never deploy officers in this way or condone such behaviour."

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